This awesome Lego clock tells time with balls

People can make pretty much anything with Lego nowadays — from an enormous working NES controller, to a machine that automatically sorts Lego pieces itself — so it’s not really a surprise when someone builds something awesome with the plastic blocks. However, that doesn’t make impressive builds any less awesome — you simply saw it coming. Lego mastermind Jason Allemann proves this notion, and though he didn’t surprise us with this Lego clock that tells time through the use of balls, he sure has us impressed.

The clock featured in the video, powered by a Lego 9V motor, doesn’t use a timing motor and controller to keep accurate time, but rather is set to position Bionicle Zamor Spheres every 55 seconds. Each sphere dropped on the bottom rail represents one hour, each one on the middle rail represents 10 minutes, while each on the top rail represents one minute. So, the time is read from bottom-to-top, and requires a bit of counting unless the machine uses alternate rails Allemann built that have visualized numbers.

When time rolls over and the number of balls need to reset on any row, a ball drops from the top and lands on the rail in such a way where it tips the rail over, draining the spheres into a reservoir where the conveyor belt can grab and reuse them. Cleverly, a motor is employed in the reservoir that powers a small piston which pokes at the pooled balls, making sure there isn’t any clogging.

Toward the end of the video, Allemann shows how the machine handles time rolling over to midnight — a Zamor sphere simply hits the tipping point of all three rails, which dump their cache of balls into the reservoir in descending order.